RE: bust at King's in San Francisco
For those who are intrested in the article in San Francisco Chronicle on Oct. 25, 2004
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S.F. parlor hit in crackdown on sex slave trade
- Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
Monday, October 25, 2004
Federal and local cops have launched a crusade against the insidious and ever-growing immigrant sex slave trade in the Bay Area -- and from the looks of things, they've already scored their first big hit.
Earlier this month -- two weeks after the U.S. Justice Department and local police announced a new crime-fighting task force -- agents raided a massage parlor in an alley off Mission Street, just a short hop from some of San Francisco's biggest hotels.
Inside, authorities rounded up 17 young Asian women believed to have been trafficked into the country for sex and slave labor.
Many were found in a basement, reachable only through a false wall inside a cabinet.
Typically, sex slave victims pay tens of thousands of dollars to get here, only to be forced into prostitution to pay off their debts.
In some cases, the girls or women have been kidnapped from their home countries.
"Basically it's a sweat shop -- only it's a sex shop,'' said San Francisco police Capt. Tim Hettrich.
The Oct. 13 raid at King's Oriental Massage, at 315 Jessie St., started around midday and had investigators working well into the evening interviewing people and collecting evidence -- including $17,000 at the alleged brothel and $40,000 at the home of the suspected madam.
Agents arrested two managers, identified only as Chong Su Long and Duk Soon Chun, on suspicion of harboring illegal immigrants.
According to an affidavit prepared by Special Agent Dwayne Cook of the Department of Homeland Security, authorities were tipped off last month when two workers turned up at the Los Angeles Police Department, alleging they had been beaten by a King's manager.
The two later told investigators they had been smuggled from Canada into the United States in May and taken directly to King's, where one of the managers allegedly paid $32,000 to the person who had transported them.
The two women said they had quickly been taught English phrases for various sex acts and told how to service King's customers -- then had been put to work paying off their debts, which included a weekly $290 deduction for food and lodging.
As part of their training, the women were also taught where to hide from a police raid, they said.
"The females would be alerted by the sound of an emergency ring and were trained to run to a basement that they were told was part of the building next door,'' according to the affidavit.
The two women said they briefly escaped in August, but were soon found by the manager and two other workers, returned to King's and beaten.
From what we're told, none of the suspected prostitutes will face charges but instead will be used to help build a case against the human traffickers who profited from them.
U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan, while declining to comment specifically on the case, described human trafficking as "a modern-day form of slavery'' and promised to fight it aggressively.
If nothing else, the big bust was certainly well-timed -- coinciding with a $500,000-plus grant the San Francisco Police Department is expected to receive next month to help raise the profile of human-trafficking crimes.
The State Department recently reported that an estimated 14,500 to 17,500 people are smuggled into the country each year for prostitution and slave labor.
San Francisco has become one of the top destinations. In January, the feds broke up a prostitution ring operating in four residential neighborhoods that relied on undocumented women smuggled in from Thailand, China, South Korea and Malaysia.
Capt. Hettrich of the vice squad says, "Because we are right on the Pacific Rim, and we are San Francisco -- where we are a little liberal about the sex laws -- they just bring them in.''
